


Just for the Record

by HallowAvengence



Category: Hustle
Genre: M/M, Match-making, Subterfuge, sometimes you just need a sneaky 11 year old to get things going
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:21:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24740728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HallowAvengence/pseuds/HallowAvengence
Summary: In which Ash's godson finds there is money to be made in match-making.Set after (and therefore containing tiny spoilers) for Season 8, Episode 5.
Relationships: Sean Kennedy/Ash Morgan
Comments: 5
Kudos: 11





	Just for the Record

**Author's Note:**

> Look my exams are done, I'm officially ABD, what else am I going to do besides write fics for an obscure ship in a dead fandom? 
> 
> (If you guessed, eat my weight in biscuits - ding ding ding ding!)

“Are you sure you’re not gay?” Alfie asks, watching Ash count his share of the day’s takings.

“Pretty sure, yeah,” Ash says absentmindedly. He’s £5,000 short somehow.

“Only, you look at your friend funny.”

“Mickey?” He’s sure it was all here a moment ago.

“Nah, the other one. Sean.”

“Yeah,” Ash agrees distractedly. Maybe one of the others counted it into their shared by mistake?

“You look at him,” Alfie says slowly, thoughtfully, “like he’s the only person in the world you never want to cheat.”

“Yeah, yeah, right,” Ash says and then Alfie’s words penetrate through his worry over the missing 5k. “Wait, hang on a second-”

“You should kiss him,” Alfie says.

“What-”

“I think he’d like that.”

“I- listen, kid, you- I’m not-” Ash fights to regain some kind of handle on his thoughts. “He’d like that?” He’s aiming for incredulous. To his horror, his own voice sounds uncertain and, ever so slightly, hopeful.

“Yes,” Alfie says firmly, “you probably just need to ask him.”

“I-”

“I could ask him for you if you want?” The kid offers, helpfully.

“No!” Ash shouts. The rest of the team, sat peacefully at the bar, unencumbered by eleven-year-old fantasists, turn at the sound of his yell. He waves a placating hand at them, leans down to Alfie’s ear. “Er, no, thank you,” he says in an undertone. He wraps a fatherly arm around the boy, half to keep him in place and half to satisfy the overwhelming urge to take the kid by the shoulders and shake him.

The boy peers at him. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of you know, Uncle Ash.”

“I’m not,” his godfather says, crowbarring calmness into his voice, “ashamed. I’m just not gay.”

“You could be bi,” the boy says earnestly.

“Bi?” Ash queries.

“Bisexual,” Alfie nods, “when you like both men and women.” He watches his godfather think about this, “It’s very common,” he adds.

“Right, well,” Ash says gruffly, “I’m not that either, alright?”

“Alright,” Alfie agrees easily.

Ash sighs, waits a few moments to be certain the topic has been dropped. A minute or so passes and Ash, relieved, begins to loosen his shoulders from where they’ve winched themselves up to his ears. He takes a swig of beer.

“Lots of people don’t realize they are bisexual until later in life,” the kid says and Ash chokes on his mouthful.

The kid pats him gently on the back. Takes advantage of his godfather’s inability to speak, “it’s okay to be uncertain. But I don’t think you need to be. I’m pretty sure Sean loves you back.” Ash manages to gulp a mouthful of air. “Or at least,” the boy continues, “he wants you to play with his cards.”

Ash begins to choke again and Alfie kindly pushes a glass of water towards him. “Who-” Ash manages in a horse wheeze, “my cards?”

“That’s what gran says when someone is looking at you all the time, kind of squinty. It means they want to play with your cards. She wouldn’t tell me what game though.” He looks at Ash with interest, “you’ve gone all red.”

Ash clears his throat, windpipe burning. “How do you even know all this stuff? Bi-what’s-it and that?”

“Bisexual,” the kid supplies. “Gran came out as a demi-sexual polyglot last year. She lets me read her magazines.”

Ash frowns, “that mean she’s good at maths or something?”

Alfie, who is smart enough to quit while he’s ahead, says “kind of.”

They sit in silence for a minute or two. Ash risks a sip of beer. Then another.

Finally, he says, “you think Sean would like me to kiss him?”

The kid smiles at him, “bet you five grand.”

※

Sean returns from Eddy’s to find a tape recorder and a note stuck inexpertly to his bedroom door.

SHORN, the note says on the front in large, messy handwriting. Inside it reads TELL UNCLE ASH HE OWES ME £5000.

Puzzled, Sean presses play on the tape recorder. It whirs to life and after a second he can hear the faint strains of Ash’s muffled voice. There’s a crackle and the audio is suddenly clearer.

_“Are you sure you’re not gay?”_ A kid’s voice asks. Alfie’s, Sean recognizes.

_“Pretty sure, yeah,”_ is Ash’s reply.

Sean stares at the thing in shock. Dimly he registers that this is a horrible invasion of the older man’s privacy; his thumb hovers over the pause button.

_“Only, you look at your friend funny.”_

Sean finds he can’t quite bring himself to stop listening. Really, he should just hand the thing over to Ash. Along with the note. He should-

-his own name catches his attention.

_“You look at him like he’s the only person in the world you never want to cheat,”_ Alfie says.

Sean almost drops the tape recorder.

※

He listens to the rest of the tape. In fact, he listens to it so many times that by 5 am the next morning, bleary-eyed and stoked on coffee, he can recite the whole thing back to front.

He winds to the end over and over, listens to Ash say quietly _“you think Sean would like me to kiss him?”_ again and again and again.

He finds himself, 95 listens in, standing in front of Ash’s door, tape and note gripped in his sweaty palm. It’s 6 am and no one, not even Albert, is awake. He should come back later. Get some sleep. Think about things rationally.

He knocks.

Nothing.

He knocks again.

Still nothing.

He knocks a third time and jumps back when the door is suddenly wrenched open. Ash, in sleep-crumpled pyjama shorts, glares at him through the crack in the doorframe. His hair is all over the place, a thinning whirlwind of auburn, eyes slits against the bright light of morning.

“Sean,” he growls, opening the door fully, “Mickey better have been bloody well kidnapped by bloody MI5 or Albert bloody well better have had another bloody heart attack or-“

Sean kisses him.

Ash makes a soft _hummmphhh!_ noise against his mouth, slack-jawed and shocked, hands frozen mid-gesture by his shoulders. They hang in suspension together for a second, frozen, mouth against mouth, before Ash stutters into life, one hand coming up to cup the back of Sean’s head, the other to grip desperately at the younger man’s hip.

The older man tastes like sleep, sour and toothpastey.

They walk backward into the room as one, kissing furiously. The back of Ash’s knees hit the bed and he half-falls, half-sits down, breaking away from Sean.

In the new-found stillness, they look at each other. Both of them are out of breath, panting softly.

Ash scrubs a hand over his face, trying to clear his mind. “Sean,” he says, at a loss. His eyes flicker to the note and tape-recorder clutched in the younger man’s hand. He nods at it, “what’s that?”

Sean hands it over. Ash clicks play. Alfie’s voice fills the room _, “You should kiss him.”_

_“What-“_

_“I think he’d like that.”_

Ash stops the recording, blinks at it. It dawns on him what Alfie must have done. “That little bloody toe-rag,” he says.

Sean passes him the note.

“TELL UNCLE ASH HE OWES ME £5000,” Ash reads aloud. He looks up at Sean, then at the note, and then back at Sean. “That’s 10 grand the little git will have taken me for.”

Sean eyes him. “I’ll give you half,” he says slowly, “if you let me kiss you again.”

Ash nods slowly as if seriously considering this offer. He stands, holds out a hand for Sean to shake. “I’ll take that deal,” he says and uses Sean’s hand, when the younger man goes to shake it, to drag him back in.


End file.
